the upward sweep of its wing. It was only a pity those parts were so expensive.
“You’ve done a fine job with it.”
Melee jumped. Instead of returning to the dim comfort of his shop, Carl had stayed in the doorway, a blackout umbrella carefully angled between him and the last rays of sunlight. He was eyeing her dragon with a hunger that had nothing to do with blood.
“He’s not for sale, Carl.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were thinking it.”
“Who’s the mind reader now?”
“The answer is no,” she said, and swung into the cockpit behind the dragon’s head. The metal warmed at her touch as she signed the starting sequence on the control panel.
“But, my dear, if only you knew what collectors would offer for a classic like that …”
“It could never be enough.”
He raised an eyebrow and muttered something just outside her range of hearing.
“What was that?”
“You clearly haven’t received your first tuition bill,” he said.
It wasn’t the sudden drop in blood pressure that sent the cold creeping into her cheeks and started her hands shaking. “I don’t care what you or anyone else offers. He stays with me.”
Carl inclined his head, baring his neck in the formal gesture of resignation. “Oh, very well. As you say. I wish you the best of luck this term.”
She touched the panel. The purr from the dragon’s engine intensified. Though she lacked the layered sight of creatures like Carl and so could only imagine the magic flowing through the creature below her, that didn’t stop her from trying. The internal magic channels would pulse golden-red with white sparks, just like her dragon’s eyes. From the heart of the engine, the magic branched out in spindling threads of fire, knitting steel sinew to bone gears and bone gears to alchrome pistons, filling the dragon like the soul filled a body.
At her touch, the dragon turned its head again. Impatient to be home, just like she was. Melee drew the sign for the students’ quarter with her finger on the square of thaumium. The symbol flared white once and faded. The dragon raised its wings.
“Thanks, Carl,” she said over the hum of the engine. “I’ll see you around.”
The first year was out, so Melee left a note in an envelope. The iron thaler gave the cheap paper enough weight to slip it beneath the door of the girl’s flat. It stung, for a moment, letting go of a souvenir of such magnanimity like that, but a first-time customer of Carl’s would need it more than she did. Even if she was a keen negotiator, that orrery would take a lot out of the first year. Besides, Melee had other plans.
The dinner crowds were just starting to seep out into the purple light of evening as she signed the dragon home. Chill air with just a nibble of winter whipped her hair into a tangle the goggles could do nothing to prevent. The wind scoured clean the sounds of the new city waking below her: laughter, shouts, growls, the clank of machinery, and the occasional scream from someone who’d failed to specify the terms of their dinner engagement. The close-fitting leather helmet her mother had sent a few birthdays back would’ve also solved the problem, but that would mean finding it, and Melee had spent a great deal of time making certain she’d never set eyes on it again.
She shifted her weight, and the dragon banked toward the World’s End district. The tightly knit cluster of houses and shops sat on the edge of town, clinging to the diamond banks of the river Râu with all the tenacity of people who had refused to accept that their beloved neighborhood was no longer a paragon of respectability, and likely never had been. Still, it had its own kind of beauty. She caught her breath as the dragon swooped low over the water. They’d timed it just right. The sun’s reflected glow ignited the banks of the Râu in a bonfire of blazing splendor for a few minutes before fading.
Melee brought the dragon down gently on the well-worn pad above the garage. The sign declaring the ancient shop to be that of JAMES & DAUGHTER, MAGITECHNICIANS gave a tired creak in the downdraft from the dragon’s wings, and she made a mental note to oil it. It was a game she played sometimes: chronicle all the little things that needed fixing, order them neatly in her mind, and then carefully, meticulously ignore them. There was always something more important to worry about, but she liked to keep up the fiction that she would get to them all someday.
Between her and the dragon, their maintenance routine was up to half an hour now. How her father managed it in ten minutes was beyond her, and she liked to take her time. The dragon stood patiently on the pad, one wing outstretched, then the other, as she inspected every inch of alchromium. Scouring steel in hand, she brushed and burnished anything with the audacity to look like a blemish. Rust was met with all the fury of her sander, grease rag, and several coats of wax. The two dents on the dragon’s front foreleg, however, she scrupulously avoided. She touched them lovingly as she passed. It had been a good day, the day her dad had let her drive for the first time. She’d bumbled into everything, of course, but he’d only laughed, squeezed her shoulder, and gently corrected her. No, the dents stayed.
Its exterior scoured clean, she checked the dragon’s fuel levels and fed its chemical tank all the remains of yesterday’s organics. It rumbled, gurgled, and belched a short blast of fiery exhaust before settling into the steady churn of digestion. Melee’s eyes smarted and the smell stung her nose as she risked a peek into the tank, but everything seemed to be in order. Satisfied, she sealed the tank and patted the dragon on its side. It didn’t have a name—that would be silly, her dad had always said—but that didn’t preclude endearments.
“Rest up, buddy. You did good today.” She slung the satchel with her textbooks over her shoulder, signed the symbol for power down on the thaumium panel, and shut the chassis door up tight. “Sleep well.”
It was an awkward scramble down from the garage roof, what with the bag knocking into her ribs at every ladder rung and her vision swimming when she was halfway down, but she made it in one piece. Melee avoided the shop’s main entrance, unlocking instead the side door that led to the flat upstairs. She had to stop twice on the stairs to quell the sudden rush of dizziness, regretting her altruism with Carl’s token. Forget the first year; she needed food.
The lights were on in their flat, burning a cheerful yellow between stacks of novels, old journals, maps, schematics, empty drakeoil canisters, gears, and miscellaneous parts even she didn’t recognize.
“Hey, Dad, I’m home,” she called.
She deposited her satchel on the nearest stack and pulled the primer out. Not for the first time, she reflected on how unlucky it was, given the state of their flat, that her dad didn’t already own at least one of her textbooks. He had never been one to learn his trade from books.
A stack of papers swayed dangerously in her peripheral vision. She steadied it without looking, as a hideous cat, or something that had probably once been a cat, tumbled out from the piles of domestic detritus. It landed, paws splayed, on the mail heap in front of the door, and after it had assured itself that Melee was watching, arched its back and began the dreadful endeavor of coughing up … something.
“Oh no you don’t,” Melee said, and snatched the cat up before it could deposit a hairball or the remains of a house goblin onto the day’s mail. The cat gave her a look of profound distaste and wriggled free, only to disappear again between the pillars of books. A moment later the coughing began again. Melee sighed. Add that to the list.
She picked up the pile of letters and flipped through them on her way to the kitchen. Bills. Bills. An advert for organic wolfsbane. A notice from the World’s End Homeowners’ Association. Another bill.
“I saw Carl today, Dad,” she said. “Sends his love. He said to—”
The envelope at the bottom of the stack stopped her. It was thinner than she expected, warped